Benue State remains the food basket of Nigeria- Governor Ortom

The Governor of Benue State in Central Nigeria, Dr Samuel Ortom, has maintained that his government will do all that is needed to ensure that the state remains the food basket of Nigeria.

To this end, he has declared Fridays work free days to civil servants to enable them go back to the farm throughout the raining reason.

He said doing so would enable the people in the state to produce more food and earn income from their farms apart from their white-collar jobs.

Governor Ortom disclosed this while speaking in Abuja with State House Correspondents in Abuja.

He observed that post harvest losses were however problems to farmers and called on investors to seize the opportunity to go into food processing to avoid these losses.

He said the incessant clashes between farmers and herdsmen would soon be a thing of the past because prompt actions have been taken which include ranching of the cows in the state adding that moving from one place to another with cows is no longer invoked globally.

“The way forward as far as we are concerned is to ranch our cattle so that we can provide security and provide other infrastructure that will help the nomads. The nomads will also need to be educated on the new trend because population and human activities have increased. We should be talking of more roads, schools, hospitals, more settlements in a land that is static and even facing environmental degradation”.

Governor Ortom said land will be available for sale to anybody who wants to go into modern livestock farming especially for ranch purposes.

He said that as an agrarian state, Benue state is conducive for virtually every crop production hence it has remained “the Food Basket of the Nation”.